Details about firmo

Hello Steemians! I get to know about this company called Firmo through @originalworks's most recent contest (post here). I think Firmo is working on something really interesting and it will potentially spark the growth of cryto-based derivatives.

FIRMO, a smart way to do financial trancation
INTRODUCTION
I remember my reaction when I heard about Bitcoin, how naïve I was to the idea of a crypto-currency, how I so strongly felt Bitcoin wouldn’t achieve any significant achievements. How wrong I was. Today, Bitcoin is still here, and it introduced the idea of a decentralized, digital currency, which has paved way for the acceptance of a decentralized monetary system. What about Ethereum? Ethereum brought the idea of extending this decentralized monetary system introduced by Bitcoin to support smart contracts on blockchain, albeit through the use of a Virtual Machine. Now FIRMO is here to introduce secure and automated financial contracts, otherwise known as SMART CONTRACTS, without the tiring involvement of trusted third parties to boost the development of a decentralized economy.

I wouldn’t want anyone to be like that naïve young me that didn’t see the potentials of Bitcoin, so this is to open up our eyes to the amazing opportunities FIRMO poses to the idea of a decentralized economy.

What is Firmo

Firmo is aiming to build an infrastructure for creating/executing financial contracts. Firmo will bring the key components of smart contracts such as their trustless and transparent nature, to the world of finance. Using FirmoLang, developers can build financial tools that have been previously only available to traditional, non-decentralized economy asset-classes such as derivatives.

What is a derivative?
First of all, what is a derivative? From the definition on Investopedia:

A derivative is a financial security with a value that is reliant upon or derived from an underlying asset or group of assets. The derivative itself is a contract between two or more parties based upon the asset or assets. Its price is determined by fluctuations in the underlying asset. The most common underlying assets include stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, interest rates and market indexes.

Still lost? Derivative is essentially a contract between 2 or more parties to "speculate" on the price of an underlying asset. For example, a derivative contract based on STEEM's price will be something like this:

Alice has 10 STEEM that she bought when it was $3 each. The price of STEEM is $3.5 now but she thinks that the market is very volatile and wants to protect her investments.
Bob is willing to invest in STEEM when it is $3. So he offers a contract, valid for a month, to allow his counterparty the right to sell STEEM to him at $3 regardless what is the current price. But to enter into this contract with Bob, the counterparty must pay $0.10 for each STEEM in the contract.
Alice sees Bob's offer and decided to enter into the contract with Bob. So she pays Bob $1 ($0.10 for each STEEM which she has) and get the rights to sell her STEEM to Bob at $3 regardless the price.
In a bullish event, which STEEM price remains above $3, within the month, Alice will not exercise her rights to sell Bob her STEEM. So Bob got paid $1 and Alice got her much needed assurance.
In a bearish event, which STEEM price falls below $3, let's say $2.50, Alice will exercise her rights to sell Bob her 10 STEEM at $3 each. By doing so, Alice had limited her losses. Bob on the other hand made a paper loss as he bought STEEM at $3 instead of the market price of $2.50.
I have just described a simple derivative contract. In real life, it is a little more complex than this but for the purpose of this article, it should suffice.

Use of smart contracts for crypto-based derivatives
In the above example, Bob could potentially code a smart contract and add it to the Ethereum blockchain. He then sends $30 worth of money into the smart contract and lock it in escrow. Alice can enter into the contract by sending the contract premium ($0.10 per STEEM) to the smart contract. Since the smart contract is immutable, both Alice and Bob can be assured that they can both get what they want depending on the outcome.

Sounds simple? But in reality, it is not so simple to write such smart contracts and commit them to the blockchain. You will need to be familiar with smart contracts development to write the contract. Even if you are the counterparty, you will also need some basic smart contract knowledge to be able to understand the contract and be sure that it does what it claims to do.

How Firmo may spark the growth of crypto-based derivatives

Firmo is offering a set of tools and infrastructure that will allow for easy creation of such smart contracts for derivatives and they have a very apt name for them, smart derivatives. Firmo developed their own language called FirmoLang which is very focused on creation of smart derivatives. Based on Firmo's technical paper:

FirmoLang is built on the insight that all financial instruments are reducible to the same triad of events: A series of transfers of value between counterparts, at selected time intervals, governed by a set of conditions like the price on the
market or a counterparty calling an option.

This is important because if a language is built with just a set of predefined focus and rules, then it will be much more secure than a general purpose programming language like Solidity.

Besides that, Firmo is also offering standard templates for smart derivatives deployment. This will enable much faster deployment speed and enhanced contract security. The full Firmo Protocol Stack can be seen below:

In addition, Firmo protocol is blockchain agnostic and will work on most smart contract blockchains like Ethereum, NEO, QTUM and even EOS. This allows for greater flexibility for crypto exchanges and financial institutions who will like to create their own crypto-based derivatives.

How it might benefit the overall cryptocurrencies market
By enabling faster and more secure deployment of crypto-based derivatives smart contracts, I expect to see a growth and increased focus on this new marketplace. When such derivatives become more accessible, investors will be able to deploy more sophisticated trading strategies to allow their trades to be hedged from sudden price movement. I think this will encourage more financial institutions to invest in the cryptocurrencies market.

On the flip side, derivatives are by nature very risky financial instruments and extra care should be given when investing is such instruments. That being said, derivatives in traditional financial assets like equities or bonds are already very common. It is a natural progression for crypto-based assets to also start having their own derivatives. Firmo, in this case, is in pole position to drive this change and I am certainly looking forward to what they can produce.

What are your thoughts on this project and crypto-based derivatives? Let me hear your thoughts?

If you have any questions, just go ask the team!

Firmo Telegram
The Firmo Protocol
The Firmo protocol, built with FirmoLang, consists of these steps.

Step 1: Target User/Group

User groups that the financial contract is being written for are assigned.

Step 2: Custom/Pre-Set

Either a standard snippet of code is chosen from the library or a custom code can be implemented.

Step 3: Compilation/Execuition

The code is launched onto the Ethereum blockchain, allowing any existing tokenized project to utilize the newly developed tools.

Derivatives
Derivatives are a financial tool that allow individuals and companies to secure a price point over a certain period of time. This is useful for businesses that depend on a specific material, the price of which may rise or fall.

Derivatives are popular among traders, since if they believe a certain asset will rise in value, they can secure the current price point and benefit from the price discrepancy.

The Problem
Financial tools have played a major role in the world of finance. Currently, users are only able to participate in a company's finances is in the form of buying their tokens. Due to this lack of financial tools, prices are volatile and determined by sell/buy orders.

Firmo and Firmolang Solution
FirmoLang will equip the cryptocurrency space with the ability to build modern financial tools as well as easily adapt them for easy use with existing ethereum projects.

FirmoLang borrows security features from airplane and train applications which are domain specific and formally verified. This gives it an edge over Solidity which is prone to attacks as seen from various hacks that have occured such as the Parity and the DAO attacks.
Zero Coverage
Firmo is designed to allow users to have little or no collateral. Dubbed as "Zero Coverage" in the Firmo TechnicalPaper, section 6.3. This is done using "permissioned infrastructure", which can be built using FirmoLang.

Firmo Team
The Firmo team is extremely qualified, experienced and educated. Led by Dr. Omri Ross, who specializes in blockchain technology and fintech, they are well prepared to take on a project of this magnitude. The development team has many experienced veterans who have released numerous projects on various platforms. As an example, Ariel Laub and Gury Traub have released 9 educational games.

Firmo Telegram
The entire team is excited about the project. They are passionate and more than happy to answer any questions you may have. Join Firmo Telegram and ask away!

firmo smart contract language enables the secure execution of a new generation of financial contracts on the blockchain. That been said I think for now. Firmo was officially founded in 2017 and is privately held in the headquarters at Copenhagen by Dr Omri Ross. I barely knew nothing about firmo till the contest. But I think right now I can buy into the ideas of this great minds

Firmo in the long run will change a lot about the financial system. firmo is building the future of financial infrastructure. 1/7 of the world’s economy is derivatives, but these financial contracts are not securely available in the crypto economy yet but with the help of firmo Lang (FirmoLang enables businesses, like exchanges, to securely and intuitively offer smart derivatives on any major blockchain), firmo will partner with blockchains to elimate their dependency on the economy.

Firmo already works with Ethereum and is in talks with other major blockchains like Neo, Cardano and Qtum. This is just the first step in overhauling today’s financial infrastructure.
Financial security features of firmolang
Firmo Lang will ensure that partners do not have fears of dwindling crypto currency by eliminating the buy/sell cause. It will begat derivatives that will secure the cryptorian.."Versatile
Firmo’s underlying technology provides a platform for anyone to securely deploy financial contracts. Firmo can work with any blockchain and our API makes it easy to integrate Firmo into an exchange or product.,''

The Firmo Protocol allows users to execute smart derivatives with little or no collateral. Zero coverage can be used in several circumstances: When the smart derivatives are executed on permissioned infrastructure, or when the sufficient trust exists in between the counterparties. This feature will be built by the Firmo Community.
Thanks to @originalworks for this contest.
firmo2018

THE FIRMOLANG AND IT’S SECURITY
A programming language is considered Turing complete, when it is able to simulate a Turing Machine. However, smart contracts created using Turing Complete languages almost always contain vulnerabilities. Infact, research shows that 45% of the Smart Contracts examined from a set of over 19,000 contracts deployed on the Ethereum Mainnet contained a subset of known exploits or vulnerabilities. This has brought about criticisms of decentralized infrastructure, and this has raised concerns among investors.

I for one know that I trust my service provider to resolve any issue that arise from mistakes that happen in conventional financial markets. However, when mistakes occur in the construction of smart contracts, resolving issues is a very complicated process. And this is where FIRMO comes into play, to avoid these mistakes.

FIRMO is creating a transparent, fair and trustless infrastructure for financial contracts, called the FirmoLang. FirmoLang has been designed to be simple and secure. FirmoLang is formally verified, allowing tools for proof assistance at compile-time. In my view, this is the most efficient way to produce secure code. It is on the insight that all financial instruments are reducible to the same triad of events that FirmoLang is built on.

It is a known fact that no system can be completely fault tolerant, however financial contracts must execute in secure environments, if the system is to be considered trustworthy. FirmoLang provides this secure environment. FirmoLang is designed for zero redundancies, expressing only the absolutely necessary functions for financial contracts. FirmoLang is verified with the Coq proof assistant formally. This Formal verification means that Firmo protocol can run a static causal check of a smart derivative, exposing any vulnerabilities or faults , before a contract is submitted to the blockchain.

HOW DOES FIRMOLANG ACHIEVE THIS SECURITY?
Like my mother used to say, “simplicity is security”. The FirmoLang is made to produce a clear cut and un-mistakable representation of contractions, in order to enable their automatic validation, execution, and analysis activities that are collectively known as contract lifecycle management. Domain specific languages have several advantages over broad purpose, Turing-complete programming languages. I for one, believe that security should be achieved, so even though, the narrow scope of the syntax made for FirmoLang may not suit complex expressions, FirmoLang enables a stable and secure environment for versatile and exotic financial contracts, and to me, this is enough reason for me to choose FirmoLang. And with the upcoming open-source release, developers, regardless of their experience, will be able to formulate exotic smart derivatives out-of-the-box.
With this security, I have no fear whatsoever using FirmoLang to create smart contracts. And I am very sure you feel the same way also.

ZERO COVERAGE AND IT'S PERKS
As a user of the Firmo Protocol, I can execute smart derivatives with little or no collateral, otherwise known as Zero Coverage. When I want to execute a smart derivative on permissioned infrastructure, I can use the Firmo Protocol’s Zero coverage. Take for instance, I want to execute a smart derivative with a party I trust with my life, I can simply use the Firmo Protocol’s Zero coverage.

The use of Firmo Protocol’s Zero coverage means, faster and more efficient execution.

FIRMO PROTOCOL’S SMART DERIVATIVES & IT’S ADVANTAGES
It is no news that most financial processes today are open to disintermediation and automation in smart contracts or representation of value through tokenization.

With the Firmo protocol, I can create smart derivatives. Smart derivative is a secure type of smart financial contract, it offers products such as futures, loans, options and swaps. However, smart derivative is not just limited to those products. It should be noted that, Smart derivatives are non-fungible and can be traded on any regulated exchange which supports the Firmo Protocol (The Firmo Protocol is made to operate with different selection of external liquidity providers and exchanges).

With Firmo Protocol, I or my business can create secure and automated smart derivatives through the use of the domain specific programming language, known as FirmoLang. Once my financial contract has been created using FirmoLang, the financial contact can then be complied using the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

If I am using an ERC20 format to tokenize an asset class, I can use the Firmo Protocol to create secure smart derivatives or any other financial instruments. However, I must use the proprietary programming language; FirmoLang. I am sure you can already deduce that FirmoLang is a versatile programming language with a very broad scope of applications. Obviously, I see no other reason why the Firmo Protocol shouldn’t be your choice for cryptocurrency exchanges, to create secure and automated financial contracts on distributed infrastructure.

COMPOSITION OF A SMART DERIVATIVE
Smart derivatives are formulated in the formally verified language, FirmoLang. Initially, Firmo will offer two solutions for users to engage with the Protocol:

A. Deployment of Template Contracts: In collaboration with partnering exchanges or other platforms, Firmo will offer a set of template contracts. The template contract will be written in FirmoLang and customized to the service offered by the partner institution. In some cases this might be future contracts, in other it might be forward contracts for peer-to-peer loans or even prediction markets.

B. Deployment of Customized Contracts: as a user, the Firmo Protocol allows me to formulate customized smart derivatives in FirmoLang. This can be done by navigating to the console in the user interface. Here, technically if I am an adept user, I can inspect the code or create customized contracts whenever needed. This is an added advantage as an investor.

HOW CAN I USE THE FIRMO PROTOCOL’S SMART DERIVATIVES?

A. Individual Users: as an individual user, I can enter into smart derivative contracts and I can also trade my positions to third parties on secondary markets.

B. Cryptocurrency Exchanges: if I am a customer of any cryptocurrency exchange, the cryptocurrency exchange can offer me secure derivative products. The Cryptocurrency exchanges can also act as a clearing institution or counterparty in any given smart derivative contract.

C. Financial Institutions: as traditional financial institutions, I can use the Firmo Protocol to achieve significant reductions in costs that may arise from clearing and settlement of derivatives.

ADVANTAGES OF SMART DERIVATIVES
With Smart Derivatives I and my company can secure a price point over a certain period of time. This is useful for me, especially if my company depend on a specific material, the price of which may rise or fall.

Smart Derivatives would also be very important among traders, in the sense that, if they believe a certain asset will rise in value, obviously they can secure the current price point and benefit from the price discrepancy that is bound to arise.

THE FIRMO TEAM
The Firmo team is a team that is extremely qualified. It is led by Dr. Omri Ross, who specializes in blockchain technology and fintech. The Firmo Team is well prepared to take on a project of this magnitude. The development team is loaded with experienced veterans. An example are, Ariel Laub and Gury Traub, who have released 9 educational games. This shows the level of expertise revolving in the Firmo Team.

Pick your blockchain

FirmoLang can be compiled to any Blockchain. Currently, we work with Ethereum, but are exploring other strategic partnerships.

Just read your post about effect.ai and decided to check your profile just to realize that we seem to share a number of interests :)
In particular that we both share a similar passion towards cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology :)